


Astronomy In Reverse: Excerpt 2

by pansley



Series: Winter!Dad [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Bucky "Lord beer me strength" Barnes, Gratuitous Superfamily, Kid Fic, M/M, Steve's just trying to keep everyone alive, Superfamily, Tony Stark Almost Gets Strangled, rated T for swearing and a couple dudes mackin' out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 18:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16269947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pansley/pseuds/pansley
Summary: An excerpt from Astronomy In Reverse where Peter gets de-aged and Bucky loses his shit.





	Astronomy In Reverse: Excerpt 2

He knows something is wrong the moment he sets foot in the penthouse.

Neither Peter nor Steve were waiting for him on their floor, which isn’t totally abnormal—Steve isn’t due back from his mission until tonight, and he _had_ left Peter with Tony initially, so naturally, the first place he goes to find his kid is Tony’s personal floor, his stomach inexplicably in knots.

The knots are justified when the elevator doors open and Bucky steps through the foyer, toward the kitchen, momentarily coming to a stop when he hears Steve’s frustrated, frantic voice in the next room.

“How the hell could you let this happen?” Steve snaps, making Bucky’s eyebrows raise. “This is bad. We need to fix this _now,_ before Bucky gets back.”

“What are _you_ freaking out for?” Tony snarks, sounding a little strained. “ _I’m_ the one he’s going to toss off the balcony when he finds out.”

Steve, seemingly ignoring the other man, talks over him and says, a little louder, “Peter, enough. Playtime is over. Come down from there, _right now._ ”

No response comes, and Steve loudly and irritably sighs, filling the room with a muffled clap as he most likely drops his face into his hands. “How do we get him down? Tony, do something.”

“What do you want me to do, get a broom?”

 _That_ has Bucky rounding the corner without hesitation, startling both men as he advances on them, his stomach knotted and his mind going a mile a minute.

Steve and Tony give him the same shocked, nervous look, frozen in place as Bucky slowly lifts his gaze, not seeing anything odd or out of place, until he’s looking straight at the ceiling.

“What… what the _fu—_ “

“Daddy!” Peter cheers, in a voice that’s much higher than the already-abnormally-high one he usually speaks in, reaching down to Bucky with open arms like he’s asking to be picked up, except he’s sitting upside down, hanging from the ceiling.

Bucky blinks, confusion and incredulity crossing his face as he lowers his gaze again, staring daggers at Steve, and then turning to Tony.

“Stark,” he says, voice even and positively _dripping_ with rage. “Why the fuck is my kid _three feet tall?!”_  
  


* * *

  
Bucky isn’t fully paying attention as Steve and Tony try to explain just how the hell… _this_ … happened.

“So anyway, Stephen—”

“Dr. Strange,” Steve clarifies.

“Yeah, Master of the Dark Arts or whatever the hell he calls himself, anyway, so—he went back to his museum-thingy with the Time Stone to try and figure out how to undo… this.”

Bucky _is_ listening, but he isn’t looking at Steve or at Tony. His attention is solely focused on the small, giggly child happily playing on the floor in the middle of the room, building little robots out of some harmless spare parts Tony gave him.

“So let me get this straight,” Bucky finally says, managing to tear his gaze from the little boy obliviously playing in front of him and looking to Tony with a hard, unimpressed glare. “This doctor guy brought a magical, time-altering rock into the tower so you could try and dissect it, you— _for some fucking reason—_ allowed Peter to be in the room with you while you screwed around with it, and it, what, sent him back in time? Is that about right?”

“Well, more like it, uh, reversed his age, but yeah, that’s about the gist of it,” Tony winces, shrugging. “Bruce went back with Stephen to try and come up with a potion or a spell that’ll get him back to normal, but in the meantime…”

“In the meantime,” Bucky says, voice steadily growing louder as he stands up, advancing on Tony, stopping right in front of the shorter man as he emphatically barks, “my kid is stuck in a _four-year-old’s_ body for God knows how long—”

“Technically, he _is_ a four-year-old—”

“—and _you_ are never, _ever_ babysitting him again!”

Tony recoils, looking completely insulted as he lifts a hand to his chest with a slight gasp. “That is completely unfair!” he protests, gesturing down at the small boy on the floor. “He’s fine! He’s still the same kid, he’s just— _shorter!”_

Bucky lifts both of his hands with the intent of strangling the absolute _life_ out of the infuriating other man, but Steve intervenes, wrapping an arm across Bucky’s chest and pulling him back. “No murdering Uncle Tony in front of Peter, Buck.”

“Uncle Tony!” Peter rejoices, giggling as he lifts the two little robots he assembled, one of them strangling the other, like Bucky had been about to do to Tony.

The sight makes Bucky’s anger deflate somewhat, and he shoots Tony a vehement glare that very clearly says, _this isn’t over,_ before bending down and scooping Peter into his arms, and then he storms out of the penthouse and back to his personal floor.  
  


* * *

  
Four-year-old Peter is simultaneously wildly different and eerily similar to sixteen-year-old Peter, Bucky discovers.

The kid is still talkative, still bubbly, still endlessly curious about everything, but he’s also way more easily distracted, not to mention cuddly. He doesn’t look all that different (save for being less than half the height he was this morning), but at the same time, he looks like someone took all of his regular features and turned the dial on them to the max.

His eyes, for example, were always big and dark and bright, but _now—_ well, between them taking up most of Peter’s face, and his ears sticking out from the side of his head like he hasn’t grown into them yet—it’s like someone took regular-Peter’s facial characteristics and slapped them onto little-Peter’s face without adjusting their size to make them fit.

It’s helplessly adorable, but Bucky’s still way too unimpressed by the entire situation to admit that out loud.

Peter obviously doesn’t talk as well as he did as a teenager, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. He babbles nonstop as Bucky tries to fix the clothes that are draped around his body, way too big for him now, until he gives up and lets the kid run around in a T-shirt that drops down past his knees like a dress, only bothering to pin the kid’s boxers for modesty’s sake.

But he thanks every deity he can think of that Peter will still eat anything put in front of him.

“Finish your sandwich, Peter. You can keep playing after.”

“Don’wanna keep playing,” Peter says as shoves another slice of the sandwich into his mouth. “Can we color?”

“Uhh,” Bucky stalls, turning to rifle through the drawers in the living room, still not sure where anything is in this damn place. “You can, but all we have is pens and this notepad,” he says, holding the items up for Peter to see.

The kid looks slightly disappointed, but nods anyway. “Okay,” he says, pushing his now-empty plate away. “Can we watch TV, too?”

The realization that he’s going to have to find toys for Peter to play with as long as the kid is stuck like this makes Bucky feel weary and oddly worried at the same time. “Sure, kiddo.”  
  


* * *

  
The chatter of some inane children’s show fills their apartment as Bucky lies dog-tired on the couch, palms pressed tightly to his closed eyes to try and push against the oncoming headache that’s blooming deep within his skull. Peter is happily coloring on the floor, his attention divided between the loud, bright cartoon on the TV and the Captain America drawing he’s making.

If Bucky’s learned anything since Peter came into his life, it’s that fatherhood is fucking _exhausting._ It was exhausting when Peter was a cheerful, reckless teenager who didn’t have an unreasonable bone in his body, but _now,_ well. Bucky vows he’ll never complain about being tired ever again, once Peter is back to normal.

And that when Steve isn’t looking, he’s absolutely going to throttle Tony Stark to death.

 _That_ particular fantasy is interrupted when Peter crawls on top of him and sits on his chest, leaning down to comfortingly pat Bucky’s metal hand, still pressed against his eye.

“Daddy, you not feeling good?” Peter asks sweetly, in his voice that Bucky still doesn’t completely recognize. He lifts his hands off his face and looks up at Peter, at his little head, his worried expression.

“I’m fine, Pete,” he says, sighing. “How about you? You bored?”

“Uh huh,” Peter nods, lifting his drawing of Steve, who is colored in completely blue, only discernible at all by the star on his much-too-large shield. “Can we go on the slides?”

 _The slides?_ Bucky questions, frowning. “You mean at the park?”

“Yeah!” Peter beams, bouncing excitedly. “Please can we?”

Sighing, Bucky grabs Peter under his arms and lifts him up, depositing him safely on the floor as he stands. “Okay,” he says. “But we have to go upstairs and see Sta— _Uncle Tony_ first.”

“Yay!”

Bucky watches the little boy dash for the elevator, his baggy clothes hanging off him. The shorts he’d been wearing this morning are so long on him now that they’re more like a pair of ill-fitting pants, pinned garishly around the child’s waist.

They go upstairs, and Tony’s head snaps up when Bucky barges into his office, not bothering at all to hide his irritation. “Thanks to you, I have to take this kid shopping,” Bucky says, voice hard and cold. “So give me your credit card.”  
  


* * *

  
“Don’t look so sore, Buck,” Steve chastises, but with a fond smile on his face. “Look, Peter’s having a great time.”

“Peter has a great time with everything he ever does. He isn’t exactly a reliable judge,” argues Bucky, glaring unreservedly ahead as he watches Tony lift a giggling, cheering Peter high up into the air, to the swarming attention of all the other shoppers around them. “Besides, _he’s_ turning this into a spectacle.”

“Tony does have a habit of doing that,” Steve agrees. “You have to admit, though, Peter’s a pretty cute kid.”

“And? He was always cute.”

“What I mean is, you’ve known him the longest, had the most time to bond with him. He was younger when you met him, so you got to experience a little bit more of his childhood than Tony did. I think he’s just trying to soak up as much as possible.”

“Tony isn’t his dad,” Bucky gripes, feeling a tad ridiculous for doing so. He knows how much Tony means to Peter, how close they’ve become. He would never try and take that away, even if he often finds the other man to be completely insufferable.

Steve gives him a grin that wholly confirms just how ridiculous he’s being. “You know Peter loves you more than anybody else,” he says. “Getting shrunk hasn’t changed that.”

“Daddy!” Peter excitedly calls over Tony’s shoulder, reaching for Bucky with his tiny, grabby hands, as if to prove Steve’s point. “Daddy, look! Teddy!”

Bucky’s gaze follows in the direction the little boy is pointing, through the display window of a toy store across from them.

“Oh God,” Bucky groans, as Steve helplessly sniggers to himself, unable to hold in his amusement that, of all the toys Peter could possibly want in this entire godforsaken mall, of course the one he’d eagerly point to would be the fucking _Bucky Bear._

Tony turns around and looks at Bucky, a mischievous grin on his face and a playful glint in his eyes.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Bucky says, not caring that Tony is probably too far ahead to hear him, knowing the man will be able to read what he said by the movement of his lips and the glare on his face.

“Come on, Pete,” he hears Tony say to the little boy, grinning ear to ear. “Let’s go get you a teddy of your daddy.”  
  


* * *

  
“Peter Benjamin Parker, so help me _God,_ you get your naked ass back in that bathroom _this instant!”_ Bucky hollers after the little boy, both of them soaking wet from the bath Peter has sufficiently ditched out on, leaving two trails of watery footprints down the hallway. He can hear the kid giggling gleefully as he tries to hide, so overjoyed at the idea of Bucky having to chase his naked butt around their apartment.

“Come find me!” Peter urges, still laughing, his voice echo-y and so full of cheer that Bucky genuinely has a hard time keeping his Stern Dad Look on his face.

“We’re not playing hide and seek right now, young man,” Bucky calls, trying his best to sound unimpressed and authoritative, but knowing he’s really not succeeding all that well. “You need to finish your bath, and then it’s bedtime.”

“No bed! Playtime!”

Sighing, Bucky continues following the kid’s wet footprints through the living room, and then up the wall—and then over the railing separating the loft and the first floor. Bucky stops short, glaring up at the second floor as he loudly says, “You better not have been climbing these walls while you’re _soaking wet,_ kid.”

“Why?” Peter asks in a genuinely-curious, echoing shout, definitely coming from upstairs.

“Because water makes things wet,” Bucky slowly enunciates as he begins walking up the steps. “And wet things are slippery. And _slippery_ plus _climbing_ equals _falling,_ and I am really not in the mood to have to mop up your pancake of a body if you slip off these stupidly high walls.”

“I won’t fall!” Peter calls back, almost sounding affronted. “I’m sticky!”

“Yeah, that’s because you’re covered in shampoo, which you’ve tracked all over the damn place!”

His only response to that is another childlike laugh, Peter sounding so absolutely pleased with himself that Bucky is going to have to ask Tony’s AI to send its robot janitors to come clean every inch of the floor and walls.

The trail leads into Peter’s room and ends at the closet. Bucky pulls the doors open, pulling out Peter’s new clothes, bags and bags of them still with their tags on, thrown onto the closet floor as soon as they got back from the mall earlier. Peter isn’t hiding amongst them, isn’t covering himself with his regular teenage clothes hanging semi-neatly from the rack, but Bucky does find a discarded T-shirt that’s slightly damp and soapy, like the kid used it to dry himself off.

“Peter, come out,” he says as he stands back up and surveys the room grumpily, one hand resting on his hip. “And don’t get comfy, because you’re daft if you think I’m not throwing you back in that tub when I catch you.”

More giggling is the only reply he gets, so Bucky follows the sound across the room to Peter’s tall, overflowing laundry hamper, and lifts the hoodie lying on top to find… a furry pair of ears.

“What the—”

Peter’s head pops up like a groundhog, ears first, bright orange and made of a towel-like fabric, sewn to the top of a hood he has pulled over his head. He looks up at Bucky and grins, then tips the hamper over and scrambles to his feet, making a break for it past him.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Bucky says as he effortlessly scoops the kid up, then holds him out by the underarms as he looks him up and down. “What are you wearing?”

It’s some kind of one-piece, bright orange with a yellow circle in the middle that’s probably supposed to resemble a stomach. There’s a cartoonish, distinctly-canine looking mouth and eyes printed on the front of the hood, and little paws printed on the feet that cover Peter’s own, and falling down between his legs, Bucky spots a bushy, neon-orange tail.

“Fox jammies!” Peter grins, kicking his feet slightly so the ears on his head and the tail between his legs start to sway. “Uncle Tony bought it for me.”

“Is this why he insisted on coming with us?” Bucky asks aloud, more to himself than to Peter as he sets the boy on his hip and starts carrying him downstairs. “So he could turn your entire wardrobe into nothing but animal costumes?”

“Uh huh,” Peter agrees with a small yawn, leaning forward to rest his head on Bucky’s shoulder, pressing his face into his neck. “He said’was gonna drive you crazy.”

“Of course he did,” Bucky gripes, but in a soft voice, feeling Peter slump against his chest tiredly, the little boy wrapping his arms around his neck, drifting off before they even reach the bathroom.

With a sigh and an exhausted, internal, _fuck it_ , Bucky turns around and carries the boy back to his room, making sure his fox-eared hood is pulled all the way up to protect his pillow from his still-soapy hair as he tucks the kid into bed.  
  


* * *

  
“You look tired,” Steve says as he joins him on the bed, leaning over gingerly to lay his hands on Bucky’s shoulders, even the metal one, giving them a tender massage. “Long day, huh?”

“I thought he was hyper before,” Bucky mumbles face-down into his pillow. “I don’t remember the last time I had to run around so much. Everything hurts. Even my socks.”

Steve bends down and presses a kiss to the side of his face. Bucky can feel the smile stretched across his lips. “Maybe I can help with that?”

Bucky grins and rolls over, wrapping an arm around Steve’s neck to pull him down slightly. “You sweet talkin’ me, Rogers?”

“I plan to do a lot more than just talk,” Steve says lowly, dipping forward and chastely kissing him just below the ear, on the sensitive part of his neck, his beard gently scraping in all the best ways against Bucky’s oversensitive skin. “Steve…”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Steve quietly says to him, his breath tickling the shell of his ear. “Want me to make you feel better?”

Bucky parts his legs, hooking one around Steve’s waist to pull the man between them, arching his back slightly so that Steve can feel the hard bulge through his sweatpants.

“You’re making me feel better already,” Bucky says with a playful smile, loving the way Steve’s pupils dilate, the dark look swimming in his eyes. He lifts his head slightly off the pillow, leaning forward with the intention of kissing the absolute daylights out of him, but Steve meets him halfway, surging down and taking Bucky’s mouth with his, pleasantly startling him.

Steve presses forward until Bucky’s head hits the pillow again, and he gratefully lets himself be pushed down, settled on top of. Steve breaks away from his mouth and starts peppering his neck with kisses and light nips, worshipping the column of Bucky’s neck, making his breath catch. _God, yes, feels so good._ Bucky sighs, tipping his head back further. Steve picks up on his signal, starts venturing lower, kissing over his collarbone, his chest. _Yes, yes—_

“Daddy?” calls a small voice.

Bucky and Steve both flinch, accidentally smacking their faces together as they hurry to sit up. Bucky practically throws Steve off of him so he can see the door across from their bed. “Peter,” he gasps, grabbing the edge of the duvet and hastily pulling it over his lap. “The hell are you doing out of bed?”

“Bad dream,” Peter mumbles, rubbing his eyes, completely unperturbed by walking in on them. His eyes are slightly red-rimmed, his hair an absolute disaster of curls.

Mood sufficiently killed, Bucky collapses back against his pillow, kneading over his closed eyes with his palms. “It was just a dream, kid, you’re all right. Try and get some more sleep.”

“’Kay,” Peter says, and the next thing Bucky knows, the mattress is jolting slightly as Peter pulls himself up onto it. Bucky and Steve both give Peter the same speechless, incredulous look as the little boy crawls in between them, cozying up to Bucky’s side as he gets comfortable, then sleepily asking Steve, “Can you move over’little?”

Steve complies, biting his bottom lip to suppress his grin as he scoots to the side, and Bucky asks, “Uh, wouldn’t you be more comfortable in your own bed?”

“No,” Peter says happily, already sounding on the verge of sleep. He rests his head against Bucky’s chest, his sticky, shampooed hair practically gluing them together. “G’night.”

“Goodnight, Peter,” Steve quietly chuckles, gently patting the boy’s back as he pulls the duvet over them. He gives Bucky an apologetic shrug, then lies down and throws his arm over both of them, spooning them gently.

He falls asleep frustrated, but it’s still the best night’s sleep Bucky’s had in months.  
  


* * *

  
Suspicion fills Bucky as the elevators open onto Tony’s penthouse, revealing an assortment of voices coming from down the hall. Peter tries to excitedly dash forward, but Bucky and Steve are quick to keep him between them, each holding one of the boy’s hands.

“Peter, you stick close to me, you got that?” Bucky says as they head for the living room. “You stay next to me and Papa.”

“N’Uncle Tony?” Peter asks, walking so fast that he’s almost trotting, his tiny feet tapping against the polished floors.

“And Uncle Tony,” Steve agrees, despite Bucky’s surly look.

They come around the corner leading into the wide, open space, and are greeted by a room full of faces—all of them Bucky recognizes, though there’s one he hasn’t met.

“There they are!” Tony happily greets, standing up and walking over to them. He looks like he’s about to say something, but Peter wrestles away from their hands and leaps forward, arms out, and Tony loses whatever was on the tip of his tongue to instead bend down and lift the giggling child up into the air. “Hiya, Petey-pie. How’s my favorite little hero?”

Peter hugs him around the neck, but is distracted by the sight behind him, his mouth falling open slightly as he whispers, “Uncle Tony, that Thor?”

“You bet it is,” Tony says as he moves the boy to his hip, turning around so they can both face the room’s occupants.

“Thor!” Peter cheers, happily waving to the man across the room. Thor beams and strides over to them, his red cape swooping behind him, and Steve subtly puts his hand around Bucky’s waist when he tenses, sensing his discomfort.

“So this is the Man of Spiders I’ve heard so much about?” Thor asks in his deep, jovial voice. “I am pleased to meet you, Peter Parker.”

“Hi,” Peter says, shyly, but still with a grin on his face. “Where’s meeyoner?”

Thor’s smile widens and he lifts his hand, palm up, facing the mouth of the hallway at the other end of the room. There’s a slight rumbling sound, and then a _whoosh_ of air as the hammer comes flying from down the hall. Bucky instinctively takes Tony and Peter both into his arms, pulling them behind himself and turning his body to brace for the impact, face cold and calm as Thor easily catches the weapon in his hand.

“Not to fear,” Thor grins at him. “It only comes to me.”

Peter claps joyfully, his eyes bright and sparkling. “Meeyoner!”

“I think we’re okay, Bucky-bear,” Tony says with a smirk, gently shrugging out of his hold. “Thor, this is Bucky, Peter’s dad and Cap’s worse half.”

Steve gives Tony an unimpressed glare, while Bucky merely rolls his eyes, unaffected.

“I am pleased to meet you both,” says Thor, smiling at Peter and then reaching a hand out to Bucky. “So you and Captain America are a pair? I am happy for you.”

Bucky shakes his hand, letting Steve be the one to awkwardly thank him, though it’s less awkward with that big, dumb grin on his face. “Yeah, so are we,” Steve says.

“Well, since you guys are finally here, should we listen to what our doctor friends came to say?” Tony asks, directing their attention back to the other occupants in the room. Bruce and the other doctor—Strange?—briefly look at each other, before Strange says, “Well, we’ve made progress, but we don’t have any concrete solutions, yet.”

“That’s not exactly much of an update,” Steve says, as Bucky gazes at Peter’s small body in Tony’s arms.

“It’s a slow process,” Bruce chimes in, tone sympathetic. “We’re looking at every angle—scientific, magical, otherworldly—Stephen’s the only one who can wield the Time Stone, so we’re pretty sure he’s the only one who can fix this, other than…”

 A tense silence befalls the room. Bucky’s brows furrow into a slight frown, not liking the way the man trailed off. He eyes Bruce warily as he asks, “Other than what?”

“Well, I know this isn’t exactly the solution you were hoping for, but have you considered just… waiting?” Bruce asks.

Bucky’s face twists into confusion. “For what?”

Steve wraps his arm around his waist again as Bruce says, “Y’know… until he grows up.”

“That’s not a solution at all,” Bucky says, and he pointedly looks at Tony and makes eye contact as he says, “You did this, and you’re fixing it, no matter how long it takes.”

The silence sets back over the room, broken when Strange abruptly stands up and says, “I’ll keep looking for some kind of reversal spell in my library,” before he turns to Bruce. “You might as well stay here and take advantage of Stark’s lab.”

“I’ll give you a hand, Brucie,” Tony says, lowering Peter to the floor.

Dr. Strange lifts his hands and moves them in a wide circle, opening a yellow, crackling portal onto some kind of old, dark study. Peter gasps and surges forward, curious and excited, but Bucky grabs him by his animal-eared hood and holds him back, watching as the man steps through, and then is gone.

“Daddy, didya see that?” Peter shouts, jumping up and down hyperactively. “He did magic!”

“Yeah, well, Uncle Tony and Uncle Bruce are about to do some even cooler magic,” Tony says in almost a mutter, as he leads the other man toward the staircase.

“’Uncle Bruce’?” Bruce asks, giving them a slight wave as he follows behind.

Once they’re left alone, Peter shyly approaches Thor, grabs his cape with his small, eager hands and says, “Uncle Thor? Wanna play hide n’seek?”

Thor grins down at him, bending over to lightly ruffle his hair. “I would be most enthused to play with you, small one!”

Peter grins ear to ear. “Okay! Come find me!” And then he skirts around the giant man and dashes toward the staircase, but he doesn’t go up it, no—he jumps and lands with his feet flat on the wall, running up it horizontally, until he reaches the railing encasing the loft, which he climbs over much less gracefully.

“You get used to that,” Steve says to a stunned Thor, who is staring after the kid with an impressed, disbelieving expression.

“I suppose I must,” he says, before trotting after the boy, hammer in hand, which makes Bucky’s stomach churn. “Ready or not, Man of Spiders, it is here that I come!”  
  


* * *

  
To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Peter _adores_ “Uncle Thor,” to the point that, when Bucky heads into the living room to tell them that dinner is ready, he’s completely unsurprised to find Peter curled up in the man’s lap, happily dozing while Thor seems completely fixed on the kids’ show playing on the TV.

“I believe I have sufficiently tired him out,” Thor smiles at him, gently patting the boy’s head. Bucky can’t help the slightly uneasy feeling that the sight of Thor’s massive hand on his son’s tiny head causes him.

“Give him ten minutes,” he says. “He’ll be literally running up the walls again before you get comfortable.”

Thor chuckles, and Bucky walks over to gently lift Peter up, pulling the boy up against his chest as he says, “Hey, Peter, time to wake up, pal. It’s dinner time.”

Peter merely mumbles in reply, burying his face in Bucky’s neck sleepily. Thor pats Bucky’s shoulder as he walks past, headed for the kitchen, and winks as he says, “Told you I tired him out,” with a haughty grin that doesn’t leave his face as he leaves the room.

Sighing, Bucky jostles Peter slightly, to the boy’s protest, and sits him down on the edge of couch while he kneels in front of him. “Come on, kiddo, if you sleep now you’ll be up all night. It’s time to get up.”

Peter slowly blinks his eyes open, and Bucky steadies him on the edge of the couch, ensuring the boy won’t immediately fall over the moment he lets go, before standing back up. “On your feet, let’s go,” Bucky says as he turns and follows Thor toward the kitchen.

“Daddy?” Peter gently calls after him, and the timid, unsure tone of his voice makes Bucky pause. He turns around and glances at the boy, surprised by how awake Peter suddenly looks, the way he’s staring into his lap, downcast. “What is it, Pete?”

“Do you…” Peter starts, hesitantly, his shoulders hunching slightly. “Do you… not like me now?”

“ _What?”_ Bucky exclaims, suddenly feeling cold all over. “What are you talking about?”

“Now that m’little,” Peter says, sadly. “Do you not like me?”

Bucky’s moving before he realizes it, kneeling back down in front of the kid as he adamantly says, “Peter, no, that’s crazy. Of course I still like you.”

“But you like me better big,” Peter half-asks, half-says, small and shy. “That’s why you’re mad at Uncle Tony?”

“Peter,” Bucky says, taking the boy’s small— _God, he’s so small now, look at him—_ face between his hands, holding him there. “You listen to me. This whole situation is… it’s _terrifying_ for me, and I’m worried about you. But I’m not mad. And I _do not_ like you even a fraction less than I did before. Whether you get older, or younger, or stop aging completely doesn’t change anything. You’ll always be my kid, and I’ll always love you.”

Peter’s eyes well up with tears, and he lunges forward, wrapping his small, thin arms around Bucky’s neck in a tight hug. “I love you too, Daddy,” he babbles through his tears, sniffling as he presses his face into Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky hugs him back, pulling the kid into his arms, his hand buried in the same baby-soft curls Peter’s always had.

It wouldn’t be the end of the world, if things stayed like this. Peter would still be Peter, no matter what.


End file.
